Kansas remains one of a handful of states that has not legalized it medical use of marijuana Or extended their Medicaid programs for at least another year.
Republican state senators on Friday blocked efforts to force debate on both issues ahead of the GOP-controlled Legislature’s scheduled adjournment for the year on Tuesday. Supporters of each measure fell short of the 24 votes needed to take a bill out of committee on each topic.
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Supporters of both proposals argue that they have popular support, yet in each case the decade-long effort has been thwarted. Kansas does not allow voters to place proposed laws statewide on the ballot, a path that has led to every measure being approved in other states.
All but 12 states have legalized medical marijuana, and all but 10 have expanded Medicaid in line with the federal Affordable Care Act of 2010 and its promise to cover nearly all costs. Besides Kansas, only Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming have not done so, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“We’re behind schedule,” state Sen. John Dall, a western Kansas Republican who voted for both measures, said after Friday’s vote.
Given the GOP’s 29–11 Senate majority, Republican leaders expected both efforts to fail, and viewed them largely as political grandstanding.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly speaks during a roundtable discussion in favor of expanding the state’s Medicaid program at the Shawnee County Jail on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Topeka, Kansas. Democratic governors support Medicaid expansion, but Republicans have blocked the effort. The Senate will force debate on this. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
The medical marijuana vote was 12–25, with three senators absent. Law enforcement officials oppose the idea, believing that medical marijuana is too close to legalizing recreational use.
During committee testimony earlier this year, opponents also pointed to Oklahoma officials’ frustration over the legalization of medical marijuana by ballot initiative in 2018. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, has said the marijuana industry’s explosive growth has occurred under a lax law. This has attracted an influx of criminals and foreign nationals for illegal black marketing operations.
“We had no idea we would have 10,000 growers, which is far more than California and all these other states, and anyone with a hangnail could get a medical card,” Republican Governor Kevin Stitt Said.
But Oklahoma received about $52 million in revenue from the excise tax on marijuana in 2023 and an additional $67 million in state and local sales taxes.
Cheryl Kumberg, a registered western Kansas nurse and president of the Kansas Cannabis Coalition, said Oklahoma’s problems stem from its lax laws. He said Kansas residents who can obtain cannabis from other states are using it, risking legal issues, to address their medical problems.
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “I can go 45 minutes one direction, a few hours the other, and you can just use it how you want.”
Democratic Governor Laura Kelly Even medical marijuana was tied to Medicaid expansion in 2021, with a marijuana tax failing to cover the state’s relatively small portion of the cost of expanding Medicaid health coverage to another 150,000 people.
The Medicaid expansion vote Friday was 18-17, despite months of aggressive public campaigning by Kelly and other expansion supporters. In early January, she said she was taking a “more political approach” and suggested a plan to hit hard at anti-expansion Republicans during the fall campaign.
“Whether it’s an election year or not — that’s irrelevant,” he told reporters after a pro-extension event this month supporting that idea.
But last year, Kelly formed the Middle of the Road political action committee, and it raised nearly $1 million by the end of December for all the legislative seats up for election this year.
Also last year, two former Kelly campaign aides helped form the Kansas Coalition for Common Sense, a nonprofit advocacy group to support the governor’s goals. That group put out a statement after the vote suggesting that the no vote was a vote against reducing health care costs and helping rural hospitals.
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But Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita-area Republican, said before the vote that he did not expect Medicaid expansion to become a major campaign issue. He dismissed surveys and polls that expansion supporters based their popularity on “simply on how the question is asked.”
“If you ask them, ‘Do you want able-bodied people to have free health care?’ People will vote no,” Masterson said, repeating a common GOP argument.
